Let’s have a new topic, preferably one that is not Christian apologetics.
This is mostly intended as a response to a comment by KN, but I think it deserves its own thread.
There’s a recent blog post elsewhere that is related:
- Knowledge and Reality (by Dan Kaufman)
Personally, I think of myself as a realist. But I agree with some of Dan Kaufman’s criticisms of traditional views of reality.
Now my response to KN. The quotes will all be from KN’s comment (linked above).
I think I’m more inclined towards realism about objects than you are. I find this curious because you and I both appreciate Gibson’s work on affordances, and I am a realist about affordances — affordances are real features of the organism-environment relationship But perhaps you are more inclined to think of affordances as “projections” from the organism onto the environment?
I’m not sure I am understanding the point there. Affordances are not objects. Moreover, what counts as an affordance will depend on the knowledge and interests of the person (the perceiver).
“Objects” are that which pushes back against us, thwarts us, offers resistance to our actions.
I’m not sure that’s completely satisfactory. But, ignoring that for the moment, even that conception of objects makes them pragmatic things rather than logical things. And it makes what counts as an object depend on our interactions with the world.
If Nature had no joints at which to be carved, then any criteria for successful action would be equally arbitrary as all other criteria.
I’m not sure that makes sense. The world is not homogeneous, so even arbitrary choices are not equally arbitrary.
I live in Illinois. The border of Illinois and Iowa is the Mississippi river. That could perhaps be considered a seam. But if I look at the border of Illinois and Wisconsin, part of the border is a river, and part of it isn’t (the river was not followed as far as it could be). The part that is not along a river doesn’t seem to fit the idea of seam. Even if there are seams, we are not bound to follow them and often don’t. And where there are no seams, we still carve up the world. So whether or not there are seams isn’t all that important (in my opinion).
If we were trying to define the boundary of Illinois and Iowa today, we would probably do that in terms of GPS coordinates, rather than using the river. The way that we divide the world depends on our abilities.
And here’s where I largely disagree:
So while we should always be on guard against the assumption that any theory correctly describes the structure of reality, we really cannot do away with the assumption that reality does indeed have an intelligible structure, and indeed one that is knowable by us because our cognitive capacities are a part of that structure and informed by its history.
If I climb a rock, I look for footholds. I don’t doubt that the footholds are real enough to support my weight. But the footholds are not part of the structure of the rock, they are just accidental inhomogeneities. That they are footholds derives from my pragmatic choices, from my temporizing. If the rock were completely smooth, I would not be able to climb it (or maybe I could find some glue pads, and then climb with those).
I see nature as like that, in that it is not homogeneous. So we can find something like footholds that we can use to anchor our descriptions. But that does not make those anchor points part of the structure of reality.
Here’s where I disagree with Gibson. According to Gibson, we pickup information from the immediate environment. I used to think that way, but it doesn’t work. The better view is that the environment is devoid of information. We create information. Part of what the brain does is creating information. We (or our perceptual systems) use whatever “footholds” or “anchor points” that we can find to anchor some sort of practical coordinate system to reality. And then the mathematics that we see in science comes from the very mathematical way that we have used those coordinate systems to systematically divide up the world.
When I look at scientific laws, a large part of these laws have to do with anchoring our coordinate systems and using those anchored systems to allow us to make measurements (making a measurement creates Shannon information).
When I look at Maxwell’s equations, they allow one to derive the wave equation. From that, we can conclude that our measurements of electromagnetic phenomena satisfy the wave equation. I don’t think it means anything to say that light itself satisfies the wave equation.
So now think of water waves. If I’m right about information, then perception works by virtue of our brains doing something similar to measurement. So when we see water waves, we are really seeing waves in our measurements. And, indeed, it is known that the water molecules just go up and down, or in small approximately circular motions. The molecules don’t advance in the wave (except when the wave is breaking near the shore). So perception is really looking at something like measurements that our brain is making.
So here’s my objection to phenomenology. As I see it, the phenomena are created by the brain (I think some folk would agree with that), and so it isn’t that we are seeing phenomena. Rather, it is that we (or our brains) are creating phenomena as part of what seeing is. The basic underlying idea of measurement (which is really a kind of categorization) is something that can be studied when it is done publicly by scientists. So, at least in principle, we can understand how phenomena arise, and need not just take phenomena as a starting point.
When I go through all of that, I cannot find a standard whereby we can judge the correctness (or truth) of a scientific theory. We can judge how well it works, but pragmatism is a guide, not a standard. That’s why I disagree with talk about whether theories are correct. We should limit ourselves to talk about how well they work. We can then talk of the truth of the data, if it conforms to the standards set by the theory.
Thanks.
Responding to Bruce’s comment here:
You’re right that questions about whether there’s anything viable to “internal realism” bear on how we make sense of fiction. Rorty, with his characteristic perspicacity, recognized that internal realism entails that “exists” is always relative to some descriptive framework. Sherlock Holmes does not exist in the world with respect to egocentric spatiotemporal coordinates, but Sherlock Holmes does exist in the world with respect to the Holmes stories, etc.
In Rorty’s view, our grasp of reality is always mediated by whatever language-game we are playing, though we can certainly criticize one language-game using another language-game. Nevertheless all ontological commitments depend upon some language-game or other, and there are no available criteria, independent of all language-games, which could help us determine which language-games we ought to be playing.
That said, one might respond that such an argument is rather more a reductio of internal realism than an entailment of it. In fact I do not think that this argument can actually work.
I’ve taken a keen interest in how the argument between realism and anti-realism plays out within pragmatism — e..g between pragmatic realists like Joe Margolis, John Shook, Cheryl Misak, and Kenneth Westphal and pragmatic anti-realists like Putnam, Rorty, Brandom, and Huw Price. (The latter all insist that they aren’t anti-realists, with Price having perhaps the most consistent position — “global quasi-realism” — but Price then wants to be a naturalist, and he can’t be.)
I’m taking some time this weekend to work through pragmatic realism and pragmatic anti-realism carefully. Will report on results, if there are any.
I’d certainly welcome a post on anything you learned comparing pragmatic realism and anti-realism.
Also, do you have any suggested overview texts on pragmatism, say at the junior or senior level? Margolis and Shook’s recent collection gets good reviews, but I’d prefer a single author’s viewpoint if a good, neutral one is available.
I recommend Susan Haack’s decimation of Rorty.
Hardly even a flesh wound!
I also want to read Misak’s American Pragmatists, which I think takes the same attitude to any pragmatist who is not Peirce or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Still, neutral was what I was wondering about.
You often give him a shout out; what do you like about him? I only know him second hand and I suspect I’ll keep it that way.
The bad press he seems to get from certain quarters, from the snippets I’ve read of him, appear undeserved. I still haven’t found time to read his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature which I acquired a while ago. My difficulty in the book is his refutations of other’s arguments with which I’m not familiar and probably wouldn’t be persuaded by so don’t need refuting. I see a parallel with Darwin refuting Creationist argument in Origin of Species
You might glance at this Slate article, or at least scroll down to Dennett’s contribution.
PS
As far as I can tell, Rorty rejects qualia, which is a big plus, too!
Hah. There’s nothing left but his hair.
I agree that one of the challenges of reading anything beyond introductory philosophy is the feeling that you have come in the middle of a conversation with no idea of what was said before. Although I suppose that is true of any field of study.
For me, it works best if I to start with neutral overview books, IEP, and SEP (skipping the more arcane, technical bits in SEP on initial readings).
Well, of course, most people say the nicest things which which they are comfortable with in their eulogies for a professional colleague. I thought Blackburn’s first paragraph was nicely nuanced:
The world of philosophy is poorer for Richard Rorty’s passing. Courageous, provocative, exhilarating, imaginative, and often deeply annoying, he was a landmark even for those of us who found ourselves trying to set different courses. His range was prodigious, and, unlike most analytically trained philosophers, he loved the broad sweep and the unscholarly generalization.
Misak’s The American Pragmatists is quite good, actually. She’s sympathetic to Rorty — much more so than Haack — but Misak tends to over-emphasize epistemology and metaphysics.
As a relatively neutral overview, I think that Richard Bernstein’s The Pragmatic Turn is one of the best. Bernstein’s narrative is focused on Dewey (and on what Dewey takes over from Hegel), but he’s balanced and judicious on Peirce, James, Rorty, Habermas, etc. Bernstein was also one of the first philosophers to write about Sellars, and his article on Sellars (“Sellars’ Vision of Man In the Universe” in Review of Metaphysics, 1963 I think) is still one of the best things written on Sellars.
I’d also bring to your attention Joe Margolis’s work on pragmatism, though Margolis can be hard to read, because he writes as if the audience has read everything that he’s read, which is everything. But he is quite perceptive about the insights and errors in the pragmatist and neopragmatist traditions.
Thanks. I have Bernstein’s book, but have only read his essay there on Putnam and facts/values. I’ll try the others. Margolis sounds like round 2 or 3 reading, to be completed after some more background material.
I think Bernstein’s book is exceptionally good. Misak’s is also quite good, but she tends to put more emphasis on epistemology than on what Dewey or James had to say about democracy and education.
Unfortunately, neither Bernstein nor Misak come to terms with the fact that all of the classical pragmatists — Peirce, James, and Dewey — had a warm attitude towards religion. Peirce wrote “A Neglected Argument for the Existence of God,” James of course has Varieties of Religious Experience and “The Will to Believe,” and Dewey has A Common Faith. There are pragmatists in religious studies today but the dominant strand of pragmatism seems resolutely non-theistic.
Cornel West’s book The American Evasion of Philosophy is extremely good, I thought, but I read it over twenty years ago so who knows what I would think of it now. Brandom’s Perspectives on Pragmatism is, like all his historical stuff, excellent on Brandom but terrible as history.
Funny you mention that. The first thing I ever tried to get published was a response to what I think was the first thing Brandom ever got published. Something about Spinoza (I discussed a recent paper by Daisie Radner as well).
I had just finished my doctorate on Spinoza and I knew his stuff VERY well at the time. Neither of their papers were too good, and I think I’d have gotten something in somewhere if I didn’t hate revising so much back in those pre-home-computer days.
I’ll just say that there were as many typos in my paper as y’all would expect from reading my posts here.
As you probably know, Brandom was a fair-haired boy coming out of grad school. He, at least, came to deserve many of his accolades. The hotshot from Cornell who was being pushed everywhere at the time, Hillary Kornblith, never did anything much, IMHO.
As you know, professional philosophy is not exactly a meritocracy–unlike the NBA. I, however, think I got pretty much what I deserved.
A few notes I’ve written in the past two days on “pragmatic realism”:
What was true in empiricism: our modes of sensorimotor transaction with causal powers function as the ultimate criterion of acceptability in our ontological descriptions, so that our discursive practices contain true claims to the extent that they are nicely coupled with sensorimotor abilities and that our sensorimotor abilities are nicely coupled with the causal powers of objects.
Conversely, the more loosely our discursive practices are coupled to sensorimotor engagements, the less confidence we are entitled to have that our practices are tracking the structure of reality at all, and the more likely they are comforting stories (This is not an objections to comforting stories, mind you — stories can be powerful sources of social glue and personal enrichment, and we really cannot live full and complete human lives without them.)
It is one thing to say that we engage with the world (and each other) through different language-games (conceptual frames, etc.) and quite another to say that we cannot know what the world unto itself is like.
We do in fact succeed in securing a partial and tentative grasp of what the world is really like precisely through the process of mutual criticism (and also self-criticism); perspective-taking is precisely how objectivity is possible.
The key error to avoid is to conflate objectivity with absoluteness, or what is the same thing, to think that once we have secured some cognitive grip on reality then we are immune from revision. On the contrary: our grip on objective reality IS the possibility of revision in light of experience. The only absolute truths are those that, because they occur within self-enclosed conceptual frames, cannot be revised in light of how the world unto itself really is.
Far from it being the case that the objective and the absolute are identical, as the Western tradition has taught for millennia, they are in fact quite deeply opposed. The only absolute truths are those that make no contact with objective reality at all (e.g. mathematics, logic).
Although our *descriptions* of the world use concepts that are, by virtue of being our concepts (and who else’s?), expressions of our needs, goals, values, and purposes — and indeed also deeply embedded in our languages, cultures, and socio-economic institutions and practices with their own complicated and contingent histories — it is also the case that the causal powers of reality get some purchase on what we say about it, and they get that purchase by virtue of how the causal powers of real objects interact with the causal powers that we ourselves are — powers of perceiving, of thinking, and of acting.
Constructivism is not only socio-cultural but also biological, and both kinds of constuctivism are themselves moments of the unfolding of the Real.
Very interesting and helpful, except for that last phrase.
That was too deep for me. Perhaps I need to read more Hegel?
Thanks.
I certainly hope not!
I’ll return later today and try and unpack that thought a bit more.
I was trying to unpack the following thoughts . . .
Biological constructivism can be thought of as the roughly Gibsonian idea that the sensorimotor abilities of organisms contribute to the affordances that they are able to detect in their physical environments. But although for each kind of organism there is a dimension of ‘construction’ to its experience, the process whereby that construction unfolds is itself a consequence of real processes — predominantly natural selection and self-organization. These are the dynamics of real causal powers unfolding in space and in time.
Sociocultural constructivism can be thought of as the roughly Hegelian idea that the discursive practices of enculturated animals contribute to the objects that they are able to classify in their social and physical environments. But although for each kinds of discursive practice there is a kind of ‘construction’, the process whereby that construction unfolds is itself a consequence of real processes — predominantly cultural evolution — in which individuals and communities mutually constrain each other and also mutually permit the modification of inherited discursive practices in light of novel situations. So that too is a real process.
And therefore there are real causal powers at work in how construction works — though there is a kind of reality that is constructed, there is also a kind of reality that is not constructed but rather is already at work in order for there to be construction.
I’m moving my conversation with Erik about the metaphysics and methodology of the sciences and humanities over here, if that’s OK with everyone here.
This seems like an odd response. I’m not forcing science to do anything. (How could I?) I’m making a philosophical claim about what sciences do: that what the sciences do is investigate real causal powers, and that they do so in a variety of methods (i.e. there is no One True Method).
I disagree with both of the claims here.
Firstly, even though natural languages have a structure than can be investigated, natural languages and formal languages differ in two important respects. Wittgenstein was basically right about natural languages and Frege was basically right about formal languages. (Most of analytic philosophy rests on the mistake of treating natural language as an odd sort of formal language.)
The first difference is that natural language is essentially involves the application of concepts to objects while mathematical language concerns only concepts and has no objects. Natural language is inherently world involving; it speaks of the sensory things around us. We might also say that Adorno’s “non-identity of concept and object” is necessarily true of all natural languages but fails in mathematical language, because mathematics is purely conceptual.
The second difference, a corollary of the first, is that concepts in natural languages are always going to be “fuzzy”, with no sharp boundaries specifiable in necessary and sufficient conditions. By contrast, in mathematics we do have precisely defined concepts because the sensorimotor dimension of engagement with sensible particulars does not enter into the determination of semantic content.
Secondly, in the sciences we force a confrontation between natural language and real causal powers — we do not simply rely on those powers in the background, so to speak, but bring them front and center. We take an interest in disentangling how those powers interact with each other and with our sensory abilities, which is what we do (I think) when we conduct experiments. And measurement is central our practice of that disentanglement.
Operational definitions are central to scientific practice, of course. And we do could not do science if we did not have a natural language. But my interest here is what makes the sciences different from everything else we do with language, not with the fact that sciences use language.
But it’s part of your philosophical claim that science doesn’t care what philosophy claims. At the same time you insist by the force of your philosophical claim that scientists should study only causal powers, not anything else. But if scientists abstain from studying something (namely any other thing besides causal powers), can you really call them scientists?
You talk too much about your silly causal powers. For reasons of brevity, I’ll skip those passages in future.
Frankly, this point is not up for disagreement. I mean, you can disagree all you like, but you are wrong because linguistics and philosophy of language say so.
False. Natural languages are essentially about building concept systems about reality and communicating such a system, and the concept system necessarily and invariably includes both concrete and abstract concepts, always without exception.
The claim that “natural language essentially involves the application of concepts to objects” is false. This is not where natural and formal languages differ. They differ, but not on this point. The difference lies in the degree of rigour, coherence and consistency. A difference of degree, not of essence.
Both formal and natural languages are maps of the world. It’s just that a formal language has tighter and sharper design.
False. It’s always without exception a fatal flaw (lack of analytical rigour) when a formal language fails to distinguish between notation and that which is being notated. Such a flaw gives rise to Russell’s paradox (as in “the catalogue of all books” illustration of the paradox).
I appreciate your interest, but this is a trodden path with answers that have already been provided. The most important answer that you are not hearing is that the refusal to acknowledge humanities as sciences is a provincial aberration of the English-speaking world, and a rather modern one at that. It’s best for everyone for this quirk to pass rather sooner than later. Everywhere else in the world, including in English-speaking countries such as India and South Africa, humanities have always been acknowledged as sciences.
There is a difference between natural sciences and humanities (and maybe a further distinction of social sciences from both of these), but the difference is not about that humanities are not sciences. It’s that humanities conduct scientific studies in a different domain than natural sciences.
Biologists study biological phenomena, which means (in my view) causal powers insofar as those powers are generating biological phenomena, and so on. And this is because . . .
I talk about them because I hold that (a) scientists inquire into reality and (b) causal powers are what’s real. I’m trying to come at these issues from the perspective of critical realism, which I think coheres nicely with Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism.
It would help here a bit for you to admit that you’re working in a tradition of philosophy of language that excludes Russell, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Putnam, Davidson, Kripke, David Lewis, Huw Price, Blackburn, McDowell, and Brandom. You’re simply stipulating that Anglophone philosophy of language isn’t real philosophy of language. That just looks like mere prejudice from over here.
That’s just not correct — one is only entitled to say this on the basis of a philosophically sophisticated and informed criticism of Frege and of Wittgenstein, but up till now you’ve not presented or even hinted at such a criticism. A dismissive sneer is not an argument.
That seems to drastically underestimate what Frege did for mathematics and philosophy of mathematics, and how Frege’s work has been taken up by other people who know more philosophy of mathematics than you and I put together — such as Hilary Putnam and Danielle Macbeth.
That’s just not right. Russell’s paradox arises because of his conception of what sets are, not the squiggles he’s using to write about them.
The distinction between the humanities and the sciences in the US has its roots in 19th-century German debates about whether or not there’s a methodological distinction between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften. That distinction remains in the German and I believe also the French university systems. It’s not an American quirk.
So they are both sciences, but different kinds of sciences? To be honest, we can use your terminology if you insist — I don’t care about the labels. If you want to insist that the humanities are also sciences, that doesn’t matter to me. It’s the difference between the humanities and the natural sciences that interests me. We can talk about that difference as a difference within the sciences if you insist. It’s the difference itself that matters to me.
I don’t think these names make a difference. They wouldn’t disagree with what I say. The issue is with your interpretation of them.
For example, I said that both formal and natural languages map the world. Feel free to quote any of those names saying that formal languages don’t map the world.
So it’s just to do with sets? Then it’s not a paradox at all. Incidentally, I was taught about Russell’s paradox in my general linguistics course, nothing to do with sets. It’s a paradox of broad application, in linguistics it’s used to illustrate the importance of the distinction of signifier and signified which solves the paradox.
Paradoxes are there to be solved. If you have a paradox, you can be certain that you went wrong in your thinking somewhere.
You throw out names, as if they matter. We have to take a look at what they said in order to see if they matter. So, what do they say that is contrary to what I say?
I am quite sure that the problem lies with your interpretation. For example, I know that Wittgenstein’s “meaning is use” and “language game” are things blown out of rational proportion. There’s a host of fanatics who think these are somehow the basis of something profound, but nobody can demonstrate it.
Names don’t matter to me. How a theory performs in terms of explanatory power matters.
Yes, it’s an American peculiarity to refuse to recognize that humanities are not sciences. Geisteswissenschaften spell out Wissenschaften. It takes one wilfully blind to not see that.
Yes, just like physics and biology are different because they study different things. The same difference between humanities and natural sciences too – they study different things. That’s all there is to it. And if you go on about “causal powers”, well, sciences study everything. They don’t limit themselves to “causal powers” whatever that may be.
KN, being a fan of Putnam, should know this as well.
I see three differences between formal languages and natural language.
1. Axiomatic basis and checking syntax.
Formal languages are created by specifying axioms and rules for deriving correct sentences from these axioms. Mathematical proof techniques can be used to determine if a sentence has correct syntax (it is possible that some sentences cannot be proved within the axioms of the formal system).
On the other hand, whether the syntax of natural language can be specified by axioms and formal rules of derivation is an empirical question. It may be natural language syntax is based on axioms and syntax can be checked for correctness mathematically, but that needs to be verified by empirical investigation. It is not true by definition as with formal languages.
2. Mapping to world
Formal languages are not tied to a given model. We can choose which model to use to interpret the language. Scientists do that with mathematics and computer programmers do it with computer languages.
Natural language seems to be tied solely to the real world as experienced by humanity. (I include everyday mathematics in that world; of course, mathematics itself extends well beyond that). Perhaps symbolic poetry or allegorical folklore can suggest other ways to tie language to a world, but seems to me that if that is so it is a different process from the formal assignment of a model to a formal language.
It is not possible to do all of mathematics or computer programming in natural language without redefining its natural syntax and semantics to make a formal language.
3. Neural processing.
This is more speculative than 1 and 2, but it may very well be that different neural processes are used to understand formal and natural languages, or at least that formal language understanding is an extension of natural languages neural processing. I’m thinking of the work of like that of Dahaene on numbers and reading which I believe examines this very question.
Thanks for the clarifications KN.
I was puzzled by your phrase “moments of the unfolding of the Real” because of the poetic overtones of “moments of the unfolding” and the capital “R” on “Real”.
I’m curious as to why you don’t think history and economics investigate causal powers associated with human societies.
I agree with Erik on this point. We can call linguistic activities of certain types “games” if we like, but I don’t believe it’s the rule-following alone that make the activities linguistic, unless the “following” here is already a language- (or thought-) requiring activity. In other words, if (the later) Wittgenstein was a behaviorist, he was wrong, if he wasn’t, some of his epigrams are misleading.
Did it ever occur to you that what you mean by “formal language” is not the same as what KN means?
For the record, I agree with KN here. Formal language do not map the world (unless you are a solipsist). My own view would be that what a formal language maps is entirely a matter of definition that are imposed from the outside by means a natural language. A formal language does not map anything without such definitions.
Firstly, it isn’t a refusal. It is trivially obvious that humanities are not sciences. Secondly, it isn’t “an American peculiarity”. You would find wide agreement with that view in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, English speaking Canada.
Once again you should consider the possibility of a serious difference between you and KN on the meaning of “science.”
Personally, I never did much care for “language games”. I agree that it tends to be a bit misleading. However I rather like “meaning is use”.
I take “meaning is use” to be a slogan, rather than a claim. I take the rough idea to be that meaning can never be fully systematized, and that how people use words is about the only guide that we can ever have.
Good point. He may have flawed definitions.
I have also expressed this aspect of language in this thread. “Natural languages are essentially about building concept systems…”
Instead of seeing a language as a map, it can be seen as a self-contained formal system. This applies equally to formal and natural languages. The resulting system has a grammar (syntax). The difference between formal and natural (informal) languages is that the grammar rules of formal languages have no exceptions.
On the other hand, he may be prepared to state a definition. Seems to me a prerequisite for useful communication is agreeing terms.
A lot more can be said about human language than vocabulary and grammar. Using cranial volume as a guide, the development of language was well-advanced prior to human society expanding into civilization. The grammarians struggle to keep up with and assert authority in the development and evolution of human language, an inherently biological process.
I think there are serious problems with Wittgenstein’s use of “game” as a metaphor for the normativity of linguistic practices, because games are, among many other things, optional. But it’s not the rule-following that makes the activity linguistic; it’s rather that language is a kind of rule-following. And if is motivated to avoid the “regress of rules”, then the rules bottom out in practices. That’s not a behavioristic move, however, or at least not behavior in the sense of scientific behaviorism a la Watson and Skinner.
Sellars’ correction to Wittgenstein is to recognize a distinction between “rules of criticism” (how something ought to be) and “rules of performance” (what something ought to do). The behavior of a new generation is shaped according to rules of criticism, and the older generation shaped that behavior by acting according to rules of performance. Thus, when I say to a student “make sure the subject and verb agree” in order to correct her grammar, I am acting from a rule of performance — since my speech act is a kind of doing — in order to modify the student’s behavior as to how it ought to be.
This strikes me as quite correct, and not problematic at all.
I’ve already stated my definition. Erik knows it must be flawed, because my definition differs from his, and of course his is correct.
That’s another nice point — formal languages are created (even sometimes by one person) for a specific function (think here of S4 and S5 modal logics), and we are free to choose whichever formal language we need in order to solve a problem (one of Carnap’s points). Whereas natural languages are not intentionally created, develop over long periods of time, have many different functions, and we can’t step outside of natural language as we can with formal language.
Apologies. It’s a regular failing of mine not to read all the comments without jumping in. I blame BA77 and KF for developing this bad habit.
Noting your irony, of course a definition can’t be right or wrong. It’s merely the attempt to categorize so one can discuss generalities.
More precisely, when Wittgenstein says, “in the majority of cases, don’t look for the meaning, look for the use” he is not proposing that meaning is use — let alone a theory of meaning. That slogan appears during a discussion of how to handle philosophical problems. Wittgenstein’s point is that certain philosophical problems are caused by misusing language, and that if we consider the use more carefully, we will see that the problem is in fact a pseudo-problem.
Unlike Wittgenstein, I do not think that all philosophical problems are pseudo-problems, and I also (unlike Wittgenstein) do not think that careful attention to the implicit norms of ordinary language is the only method of philosophical therapy. That is, I reject his “quietism” in the name of doing philosophy that actually matters to how people live.
All Anglophone countries, and hence the philosophical equivalent of the Outer Darkness.
More and more Erik’s principled pre-Enlightenment worldview is looking like anti-American prejudice.
LOL.
Why do you see a disagreement as “the other person is wrong?” Maybe there is disagreement because two people disagree, with no right or wrong (or flawed or not flawed) actually involved.
My alternative: languages are evolved human practices that allow communication between members of a social group.
I’m one of those people who thinks that natural languages don’t really have a grammar. What is often described as grammar really comes from attempts to systematize a natural language. But those attempted systematizations always fail.
Instead, I see language as primarily driven by semantics (or meaning) and by our need, as social beings, to communicate. The practice of communication does lead to an ad hoc communications protocol, which is roughly what “grammar” refers to. But that ad hoc protocol is evolving as practices change within the language community.
Agree with this!
Care to repeat it? I didn’t notice any. We may have a different definition of “definition” too. Last time when I asked you to define the difference between sciences and humanities, it took you many posts until you managed to do it (and it remains a flawed definition for the reasons I have stated).
True that language in the collective sense is not an intentional creation of a single person. But each individual use of language is intentional anyway.
True. And it should be noted that natural languages can even perform the function of formal languages. It does not require a too drastic modification. Simply make syntactic rules exceptionless.
True if you are monolingual sluggish thinker. False otherwise.
Happy to see such considerable rapprochement. Our disagreements are not too great after all.
This is not an exclusive alternative. This is stating another function of language. There are several irreducible functions to language.
If there is no grammar, then there is no wrong/right usage. But there is wrong/right usage, therefore there is grammar. If there is no grammar, language cannot function (for example convey a message) except by accident. But language functions more reliably than this, therefore there is grammar.
It’s true that grammar and vocabulary change over time. There are two dimensions to language, diachrony and synchrony. Synchronically, language is identified by its grammar. Diachronically, language is identified by its organic continuity.
That’s a nice challenge. History and economics might, but I have worries about both of them. I worry that history tends towards “secular eschatology” — trying to tell some story that vindicates How Things Are — and that historians are not as aware of their own ideological commitments as they ought to be.
Mainstream economists are, by my lights, apologists for corporate and finance capitalism, really not much different from apologists for evangelical Christianity. They have their self-enclosed little models that make perfect sense to those trained in their self-referential jargon, and when reality doesn’t conform to those models, they run around like chickens with their heads cut off.
There is no right or wrong. Usage evolves. At some stage in the human past (perhaps pre-human past) language did not exist. Language evolved anarchically, biologically. The rules of grammar came much later as explanations to assist people learning a foreign language. Grammarians do not like this lack of power and influence.
Alan Fox,
No, Erik is right that there are norms of correct and incorrect usage — it is correct to say “the cat is sleepy” and wrong to say “the cat are sleepy”. Norms do not need to be absolute and unchanging in order to be norms. And semantics is also normative — if someone hands me a banana and I say, “oh, what a nice zucchini!” I have used the word ‘zucchini’ incorrectly. Syntax and semantics are both normative, and as such, can be described in terms of explicit rules.
Kantian Naturalist,
I was talking about communication. There is no right or wrong language or usage. There needs to be only an agreed protocol between the communicators. The rules are arbitrary. It’s an evolutionary process. Some novelties survive, some are lost. Harder to buck the formalities in large populations with written record-keeping and formal education but the development was and still largely is anarchic.
Zucchini is a good example. In my youth we ate marrows when they were good and ready. We didn’t need a word for baby marrows as nobody gave them a thought till they were big enough for a proper meal.
The sixties were for me a voyage of culinary discovery!
Agreed. There is no “wrong/right” usage.
The criteria for usage are how successfully we communicate. But these are pragmatic judgements rather than judgements of right/wrong.
Alan Fox,
That’s right insofar as linguistic norms are for successful, reliable communication, and that the world itself doesn’t tell us what the norms ought to be. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any norms.
Putting the though otherwise — and stealing a good bit from Wittgenstein here — it’s not the case that having norms requires having meta-norms that tell us what the norms ought to be. We can have perfectly good, useful norms without any meta-norms that prescribe the norms to us.
Or, as Lee Braver put it in his book on Wittgenstein and Heidegger, there are “groundless grounds” — there are grounds (reasons, norms, values, practices) but there is no deeper justification or foundation for those norms and practices that tells us that the norms and practices that we have are the right ones. All we have is the historical (Hegelian or Nietzschean) account of how we came to have those norms and the biological (Deweyan) account of how we became norm-governed animals at all.
You haven’t met my retired-grammar-school-headmistress friend!